“That’s . . . interesting,” I mumbled, while I studied the matter. Then I tried an experiment.
Ordinarily I would use a specialized magical instrument for this, but I didn’t happen to have one. There are other ways to determine the magical resistance of a place, however. The magelights had indicated a difference, perhaps – that was the only way I cold explain the discrepancy between the lights.
So I started at the west end of the hall, and walking slowly to the east I cast a special magelight between my fingers. I barely gave it power, just enough for the surface to incandesce, producing a soft blue glow. Keeping the power level steady and constant, I watched as the globe between my fingers faded out completely by the time I got to the mundane end of the place.
Guris, his wife, and several members of the household had watched with interest as I worked. When I let the spell drop, they were all looking at me expectantly.
“It’s . . . I believe the stone affects magical resistance,” I explained to the ignorant peasants. “It’s like . . .” I began, struggling for a metaphor. Then I realized I had one at hand. “Imagine the entire world is covered in three feet of snow,” I began.
“Trying to get back and forth is hard – not impossible, but hard, right?” I saw several nodding faces. “That snow resists you – it drags on your feet as you try to walk through it. Doing magic is normally like walking through three feet of snow, even for magi. If you’re really good, you can learn how to make . . . skis or snowshoes, or other magical stuff that can assist you getting through the snow.”
“Magical snowshoes?” one genius among the native Sevendori farmhands asked, eagerly.
“No, the snowshoes are a metaphor!” scolded a woman who might have been his wife or sister. “Gods, you’re an idiot! Go on, Magelord!”
“Well,” I said, a little taken aback, “Ever since the . . . the blizzard,” I said, since I didn’t have a convenient name for the spell or event or whatever it was, “every where you see this white stone, it is my belief that the magical resistance is lower. A lot lower,” I added, as I glanced back at the four magelights.
“How low?” the woman asked, curious. Not that it would make any difference to her, but it was a very good question.
“I don’t know yet,” I confessed. “I’m still studying the matter. But quite possible very low, from what I’m seeing. Like there’s hardly any – metaphorical – ‘snow’ on the ground at all, thaumaturgically speaking.”
They all nodded sagely. I doubted if any of them understood the implications of that. I wasn’t sure I did myself.
Magic resistance is an important factor in most spells. Every place is a little more or a little less resistant to your consciousness imposing its will on the rest of the universe through the agency of magical force. There are all sorts of calculations for compensating for it, and there’s even an established average “constant” that’s often used when writing down spells in general. And as we learned, the sheer magnitude of the Dead God’s use of the molopor under Boval Castle had somehow mitigated the natural magical resistance of the Umbra, and by extension the Penumbra.
But for the most part a mage is stuck with whatever the magical resistance happens to be at the place you’re casting the spell.
Until now.
Now, apparently, there was a way to lower the resistance. That’s what the white stone seemed to do. And in all my thaumaturgical studies, I had never seen anything like it.
Before I mounted Traveler, I made a point of prying a cobble out of the pile of rocks conveniently located outside of one of Southridge’s many sheds, and much to my horse’s dismay I brought it with me. I headed straight west, out into the snow, which he didn’t like much, either. I headed slightly south toward the far end of Ketta’s stream, in the direction of Matten’s Helm. When I was halfway there, out in the middle of a wide-open pasture, I stopped Traveler, dismounted, and tried an experiment. I dropped the pure white stone to the snow-covered ground and then began walking away.
For the next hour, while my horse got increasingly impatient with me, I tried a number of experiments closer to and further away from the rock. Magic resistance in this part of the valley was more-or-less normal . . . until you got to the stone. I found that it started to fall off dramatically the closer I got to it. The field was normal up to fifty feet away, but by thirty feet it had fallen to less than half of normal. While I was standing over it, it was as close to none as I’d ever seen.
Just to be certain, I picked up the heavy rock and moved it a quarter mile and repeated the experiments. The field followed the rock, I saw, and left only the slightest residual lowering of resistance behind.
Excited at the prospects, I magically split the rock. I found that both halves bore the special property, although it was apparently related to the mass of the stone – the halves only projected the field about half as far, although there was no diminishment of the strength of the effect.
It was as if I had grown up in an arid valley and suddenly learned how to produce a portable rain storm. Or, more aptly, a snow storm.
I looked back across the vale toward the castle, situated on its plateau, rising high over the villages below. From here I could see the snow covering most of the countryside, the mountain behind it, and the castle itself, from the wall to the peak of my personal tower. To casual inspection, it looked as if the whole place was, indeed, still covered in snow.
But the massive gray cliff behind the castle was now pure white – in some cases whiter than the snow around it. I could see other bare spots, nick points where rock shown through the tree cover. From the castle outward, they were all white. If all of that white stone portended a very, very low magical resistance, then . . .
I considered, and then tried. At this range, even with my witchsphere, it should be pretty hard to control the green magelight that still glowed over the top of my tower. Yet when I reached out to it with my mind, it responded as if it was simply across the room. I played with it idly for a few moments, making it brighter, dimmer, flash, bounce, and cavort until I realized I was doing the thaumaturgical equivalent of drumming my fingers, and stopped.
I mounted Traveler and headed for Sagal’s Hold, next, and tried to understand just what the hell I had done.
Before I arrived at the remote holding, I lost patience. I called on Penny’s knowledge and wisdom.
Pentandra, I kind of did something, I began, once I had contacted her mind-to-mind. I kind of . . . enchanted my castle.
Your entire castle? She answered, intrigued. Tell me about it.
Well, slightly more than just my castle. Apparently I enchanted a ring around my castle too. About seven square miles, actually.
Seven . . .square . . . miles? Min, what the hells where you doing?
I was trying to encourage my son not to kill my wife, I said, defensively. There were some complications. Arcane complications. And no, I don’t know why. So I tried to help.
Did it work?
I have a son, I pointed out. And, as a side effect, I have an enchanted castle. And an enchanted mountain or two. And a couple of villages, two Yeomanries, a couple of fields, pastures, forests, and a goodly portion of my stream.
I told her about that fateful night – I had purposefully been absent from my duties to oversee the war the last few weeks, citing the birth of my son as the reason, so this was the first even Penny had heard about it. When I got to the part about the stone’s effects, she was floored.
That’s . . . that’s impossible, Min! she insisted. I’ve studied magic for years, and there’s just no way to lower inherent magical resistance, not in any meaningful way.
I know, I know, I agreed. Yet here it is. From what I can guess, it appears Sevendor Castle likely has the lowest magical resistance of any place on Callidore. And the effect seems to be portable. It’s as if we got a magical snow that just will never melt.
That’s amazing, Min! Do you realize what this could do for research?
I’m thi
nking of the practical elements, I said, reasonably, but yes, I do realize what this could mean. I’m still studying it, and I want you to keep this confidential from our professional colleagues just now, but . . . this could be a major development, Penny.
I know, she agreed, solemnly. Can you send me some? I’ll pay for the messenger – double, if he can get it here in a week or two.
I’ll see what I can do. I would another thaumaturge to take a look. But right now I could fart in Sevendor Castle and do more powerful magic than the Ducal Court Wizard could do now. Probably even without irionite.
I promised to send her a sample soonest, closed the connection, and then spurred Traveler on toward my brother-in-law’s holding. My toes were achingly cold, and the liquor Guris had toasted me with had long worn off. And Traveler was not happy with our extended stay in the cold.
* * *
Sagal’s Hold was far from the picture of efficiency Southridge had been, but then Sagal hadn’t had a lot to work with and little time to do it in. Still, it was a far cry from the decrepitude I’d witnessed when I’d first rode into the holding. The stock and the yard were much more neatly organized, the windows on all of the outbuildings were repaired and properly shuttered, and much of the debris that had littered the area had been consolidated near the gate. Perhaps it was the snow covering everything that made it look better.
Sagal himself was suffering from a cold he’d picked up at Yule, but the rest of his folk were faring well enough. They all hailed me warmly as I rode into the compound, and escorted me to their new master’s fireside, where he greeted me with a drink of some liquor far superior of that Farant had distilled. I accepted it gratefully, inquired as to his health, retold the story of the night of Minalyan’s birth again, and tried to explain the mysterious white stone that resulted. I skipped the thaumaturgical explanation this time.
“Mayhap it was the snow,” Sagal offered. “I’m no mage, but snow seems almost magical itself. Perhaps it absorbed something from it,” he suggested. I didn’t want to dispute his layman’s assessment of a complex and sophisticated magical working. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
“Perhaps,” I nodded. “I’ve always enjoyed snow. I missed it when I was in Farise. I think I’ve made up for it, after this blizzard. And snow is an intriguing thing,” I admitted.
“Aye, always loved it,” he agreed, wiping his nose with a handkerchief. “Like little tiny stars, all crammed into one giant blanket. Or something. I never was that poetical,” he confessed.
I grunted a laugh. “Snow is pretty amazing. If you look at it with magesight,” I explained, “you can see it at a more basic level, and then it really starts to get amazing. Did you know that all snowflakes have six sides? They’re all perfectly regular. And no two is alike,” I pointed out.
Sagal nodded, impressed with my learning. “Mayhap they’re small, but if you put enough o’ them together, you can start a snowball fight. Or an avalanche,” he said, thoughtfully. That was a big deal, back in the jagged peaks of the Mindens. I’d seen them myself, thankfully from afar.
“And it’s all just water, slightly frozen,” I said, shaking my head. “Tiny little specks of water. Who knew water could be so beautiful?” To emphasize the point, I sketched the shape of a snowflake in the air, using magical light like a paintbrush.
“That is pretty!” Sagal nodded. “I never knew they looked like that. Live and learn,” he said, shaking his head in wonder.
“Yes, it’s not a well-known mystery, outside of my trade. Almost no one really knows what a snowflake looks like.” That caused something else occur to me.
“You know, it’s not the sort of thing that would be mistaken from afar for something else.”
“Maybe a spider’s web?” he suggested. “Or a wild star?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever recalled seeing a spider web on a shield.”
“Huh? I mean, ‘begging the Magelord’s pardon?’” he amended, wryly.
“Oh, stuff the ‘lord’ stuff, we’re family,” I griped. “I was just debating what the new arms of Sevendor should be with Sir Cei, not too long ago. It occurs to me that a snowflake is not likely to have been used as a charge.”
“Seems a little plain,” Sagal said, critically, as he stared at the magical vision slowly rotating in front of his eyes. “What color would the field be?”
“Green,” I decided. “Green and white. Sevendori green and white. For official Magelord stuff. But I’d need a recognizable badge, too . . .”
“Why not reverse the colors?” Sagal suggested. “White snowflakes for the Magelord . . . green snowflakes for his servants.”
I magically turned the snowflake in front of us green. We both liked it. So we toasted the Snowflake of Sevendor several times, until I realized that twilight was falling. I took my leave and headed back to the castle. Along the way I sketched several designs for the flake in my mind, and tried them out. I suppose I left a trail of glowing magelit stylized snowflakes hanging in the winter twilight all the way along the frozen stream bank, but looking back on them from the Sevendor Village commons convinced me how pretty they were. The Snowflake of Sevendor it was, then.
Sevendor had a device, now. The Snow That Never Melted had not just altered my domain; it had also altered my heraldry.
Chapter Fourteen
Sire Gimbal Pays A Call
“Somehow, anyone with appreciable Talent was affected by the spell,” I explained to Alya while we breakfasted in private, in the ground floor sitting chamber of our tower residence, a few days after my tour of the thawing vales.
She looked confused, as she hauled out a boob to feed greedy little Minalyan . . . who was eating every three hours.
Alya looked exhausted, enough so that Old Peg insisted on bringing in a young wetnurse, a native Sevendori woman from Brestal Village named Darishi.
She was a pretty little thing, and you wouldn’t think she’d be able to get enough milk for one infant out of her modest assets, let alone two. But she tried valiantly, and was successful enough to really help ease the strain on Alya. Darishi rarely spoke, and seemed over-awed by us both. It was as if she was worried I’d turn her and her daughter into toads if she displeased us, at first – and considering the changes I’d made around the castle, I suppose a little trepidation on her part was understandable.
It took a few days to get her to relax a little. And of course she was well compensated for her trouble – come spring, her husband and she would have five new goats, six chickens, and a work mule at my expense. That was on top of the bushel of seed corn and two sheep – a ram and a ewe – that they would receive as part of the spring planting. She was still asleep then, as my son had kept her up most of the night.
Alya said, thoughtfully, “I don’t understand; I thought you said magi discovered their talents in puberty,” she pointed out, as she rocked the baby at her breast and ate a muffin.
“That’s usually when they arise,” I agreed, “but everyone is different. Talent is very poorly understood – it always has been. Even in the Magocracy, it was difficult to predict which children would have it, even in families of Magelords. And some actually found their Talent later in life, sometimes as old as thirty.
There was a whole class of magi in the Magocracy who specialized in finding and developing Talent, but most of their techniques have been lost since the Conquest. Some of them really didn’t have Talent beyond the ability to spot other people with Talent.” That reminded me of something else. “And then there are what are sometimes known as ‘sports’.”
She nodded – she was familiar with sports. “Like a three-headed calf?”
I agreed, as I buttered another biscuit. They weren’t nearly as good as my dad’s, of course, but far better than those I’d enjoyed on campaign. The ovens were doing far better work, now. “Same principal, except instead of two additional heads, an arcane sport exhibits a profound but limited Talent. A lot of Waterwitches and Beastmasters are like that: they’re outstanding
about finding and channeling water, or taming and training an animal, but beyond that . . . nothing.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” she conceded, looking down at the baby protectively.
“Tell that to the Censorate,” I said, rolling my eyes. “They have a lower tolerance for sports than most magi. There’s a process for registration, if the sport is deemed harmless or impotent, but even that is difficult to acquire. It’s easier just to kill you, imprison you, or burn out the part of your brain that can do magic.”
She made a face at that. I’d described the process to her, once. It sounded innocuous enough, until you realized that several of the parts of the brain that help you do magic also help you do things like talk, see, and reason cogently. And control your bodily functions. Madness was a regular result, and there were almost always some nasty side-effects. Sometimes an execution was a more human alternative. Yet another reason to hate the Censorate.
But it was an intriguing avenue of consideration, now that the power of the Censorate was broken. “Sometimes sports can produce someone very useful, but more often than not they’re just curiosities. Like a man who can plow a perfectly straight row, every time, or someone who can sense the feelings of animals.”
“But these sports – why don’t they have more Talent?”
“We don’t know,” I repeated. “It’s not just a matter of a lot or a little, I think, it’s also what your mind and body have the capacity to handle – in some cases the effect does resemble the equivalent of a three-headed cow.
“Why does it happen? There were a lot of wild theories thrown around the table at the Academy, late at night when the magisters were asleep. My best guess is that it’s a combination of factors. Your lineage would certainly have something to do with it, but so does environment. How you grow, I supposed you’d say. Just as every tree will have a different number of apples on it, every person has a different measure – and form – of Talent.”
The Spellmonger Series: Book 03 - Magelord Page 28